Chapter 2
11:288 Wouchers
I pounded on the cold storage door like a madwoman.
“There’s no backup power, and the main supply’s cut too! Gerard, please, let me out!”
However, he thought I was still pretending. “Adrienne, when will you stop lying?” he snapped.
“If you hadn’t faked being in a bad mood, Elise wouldn’t have gone to the warehouse to help you with the ingredients, and the shelf wouldn’t have fallen and hurt her wrist!
“Stay in there and reflect on yourself! If you can’t change this manipulative behavior, don’t even think about getting out!”
With that, he gently shielded Elise and walked away.
He had left me to scream in fear inside the freezing dark.
The cold crept into my skin, and it was bone–deep chilling.
Even though I was numb, the panic pounding in my chest made me feel a strange burning heat.
I curled into a ball, pressing my injured hand against my thigh for
warmth.
Looking around the dark and icy space, waves of grief surged in me.
Once, this café was Gerard’s gift to me. He poured all his savings into it just so I could have a place to showcase my baking dreams.
Back then, he loved me fiercely, swore I was his one and only, and promised to give me the world.
However, ever since his first love Elise, came back, everything changed.
He rejected every new dessert I created, kicked me out of the R&D kitchen, and made me work at the front counter.
Just because Elise once said, “My sister’s kouglof is too sweet, I don’t like it,” he dumped the batch I had painstakingly prepared for the competition straight into the trash, right in front of me.
It broke my heart and I got sick.
In the haze of illness, I remember him sitting beside me, and for a
moment, I thought I had returned to the tenderness of our past.
He told me back then that I was his princess, and that he would spend his whole life protecting me.
But now…
My chest tightened with heartbreak, so intense it felt like I could not breathe.
When I bent down to curl into myself for warmth, a chunk of ice suddenly fell from the corner and slammed into my shoulder.
The cold storage was icing over even more!
Even the exhaust fan had gone completely still.
Just as I was starting to panic, I heard footsteps from outside.
A faint flicker of hope sparked in me. I crawled to the door with all the strength I had left and threw my body against it, trying to make as much noise as I could.
The footsteps stopped.
A moment later, I saw a familiar face through the tiny window in the
door.
I was so overwhelmed with relief that I could not care about anything else. In a hoarse voice, I shouted, “Gustavo! I’m locked in here! Please, let me out! If I stay here any longer, I’m going to freeze to death!”
Yet, to my shock, Gustavo Aguirre–the chef who had always treated me kindly–shook his head. “I cannot do that, Adrienne,” he said quietly.
I froze.
He continued slowly, “It was Mr. Toussaint’s decision to lock you in. If I go against it, I’ll lose my job.”
